Peace and Long Life
by Ruchira
Summary: Twenty-four years after the death of Trip Tucker and the founding of the United Federation of Planets, a short moment between two old friends as they remember those no longer with them. TnT, T'Pol/Archer friendship. One-shot, complete


**Peace and Long Life**

_A/N: Just my luck-I get a long weekend off for Veterans Day, and I'm knocked on my ass with a sinus infection. On the bright side, I've been spending a lot of quality time with my couch and Netflix and made it through _Enterprise_, and man, did they do that show dirty with that finale. Jump six years into the future with the last episode, end a relationship without an explanation why, kill Trip for no good reason, have Riker be the star of series finale of a show he wasn't on? C'mon. _

_So, I did what I do, and filled in some blanks by going forward and going backwards in a short moment between friends._

* * *

**2185  
Paris, Earth  
United Federation of Planets**

President Jonathan Archer didn't even have to pretend to be surprised when the intercom chimed. "Send her in," he said automatically, not even giving his aide an opportunity to tell him what the message was about or who was there to see him. She was nothing if not predictable.

He set the PADD down as the door slid open. "Admiral," he greeted with a nod.

"Mr. President," Admiral T'Pol replied with a nod of her own.

"Please, have a seat," he said, gesturing to the couch in the corner of his office as he rose from his desk. "Can I get you anything?"

"Tea, if it's not too much trouble," T'Pol replied politely as she arranged her robes to sit. She was in traditional Vulcan robes instead of her uniform; he would ask why, but knew without asking that she wouldn't give him much in way of an answer.

He got her a tea and another coffee for himself before taking the seat across from the couch. "How is T'La?"

"She is doing well," T'Pol replied. "And Henry?"

"Also doing well," he replied with a wry grin. He never thought he would be one of those men who, at his age, would have a 46-year-old wife and eight-year-old son, but compared to T'Pol, who was nearing 100 and with a 15-year-old daughter, he considered himself still on the younger side of inappropriately old parenting. Of course, T'Pol barely looked any older than she had when the _Enterprise_ was decommissioned 24 years before, and he often felt every one of his 73 years. "He's become quite the historian. And not afraid of putting his old man in his place when I get things wrong."

"A diplomat in the making, no doubt," T'Pol observed. Archer chuckled as he took a sip of his coffee and allowed the companionable silence to take over.

He didn't remember when he realized that these visits were scheduled, to her and by her. It started on the first anniversary of Trip's death and continued every year since. They saw each other at other occasions throughout the years—his promotion to admiral, her promotion to captain, her wedding, his retirement, her getting her own command, his wedding, her promotion to admiral, his ambassadorship to Andoria, several other occasions that were slipping his memory—but these visits were different. She always came to him, whether he was in San Francisco, Andoria, or now in Paris, and he let her set the agenda and lead the conversation. Sometimes they talked about Trip; sometimes they didn't. Last year was almost entirely about how he felt being elected President of the organization he helped found.

"We are moving back to Vulcan," she said in an even conversational tone, as if they were discussing the weather or the current Tellerite political climate, but he almost dropped his mug in surprise.

"You are?" he asked dumbly. She raised an eyebrow.

"I will be serving as the head representative of Starfleet on Vulcan," she said simply. "I have spent most of my adult life either living on Earth or surrounded by humans. And it is difficult to provide T'La with a traditional Vulcan upbringing on Earth."

"I wasn't aware you were providing a traditional Vulcan upbringing," he observed. She raised her eyebrow again, but didn't respond to that. "Well," he said a moment later. "It sounds like a good opportunity for you. And no Vulcan has more experience with Starfleet than you."

"Indeed," she agreed. "Sken has found teaching at Starfleet Academy to be… intellectually stimulating, but he is looking forward to resuming his research on Vulcan mysticism at the Institute. It is… much more his pace."

Archer grinned at that. He had only met T'Pol's husband a few times in the 18 years they had been married. Their relationship was an unusual one, even by Vulcan standards. Sken's first wife had become a Syrrannite and had died at T'Karath Sanctuary, along with T'Pol's mother. Sken and T'Pol had independently studied the Syrrannites and Surak in an effort to understand what it was that their loved ones believed in, and their paths crossed for the first time three or four years after the _Enterprise's_ mission ended. Archer wasn't privy to the details of their courtship, if you could call it that, but they ended up married and had a teenage daughter together and were still together, so something must be working for them.

"I regret the distance between Trip and myself after Elizabeth's death," T'Pol said abruptly. Archer blinked in surprise; T'Pol brought up Trip as often as not in these annual meetings, but she never mentioned Elizabeth, not even when they were on _Enterprise_. The last time he brought her up was the first time he brought her up: when T'Pol returned to duty two days after Elizabeth's memorial, he offered her more time. She had coolly replied that it was illogical to continue to dwell on something that could not be changed, and that there was no point in discussing it further.

"I always wondered what happened between the two of you," Archer said cautiously. He had been taken aback when the two had started—dating? That word didn't seem to describe their relationship, yet he couldn't think of one that fit any better—because it seemed to come out of nowhere. The two had sniped at each other since they had first met. He couldn't even point to a time that that had changed to mutual respect, much less any sort of romantic feelings. He had been surprised when it had advanced to that point, and now that he had the benefit of the distance of years and wisdom of age, he could admit that there was more than a little jealousy. Trip had been his best friend, T'Pol his closest confidant and at one point, the object of his desire.

And then Elizabeth had died as abruptly as she had come into existence, and the relationship between Trip and T'Pol had seemed to die with her.

"When Dr. Phlox said that there was no reason to believe that humans and Vulcans could not have viable offspring, there was… pressure, in our relationship, to make a decision. We had not considered children or marriage before Elizabeth was created. Both of us were focused on _Enterprise's _mission. We had decided to take a break from our romantic relationship while we considered the implications such a decision would have on our careers. In the end, we agreed that children were not in our immediate future."

He frowned. He hadn't considered what should have been completely obvious, not even once in the last thirty years. "If Elizabeth hadn't died," he began slowly, "would you have stayed on _Enterprise_?"

"_Enterprise_ was not an appropriate place to raise a child," T'Pol said matter-of-factly. He knew she was right. There had been a version of them in an alternate future that had done just that, but that had been out of necessity. If Elizabeth hadn't died, she would have stayed on Earth, and based on how obvious it was that both of her parents had loved her very much, they would have stayed with her.

He would have lost his chief engineer and his science officer, but would still have had his friends. If Trip had left _Enterprise_ when Elizabeth was—born? Created? Cloned?—he wouldn't have died saving Archer six years later.

He wondered where they would have raised her. Would she have grown up in Florida, repairing boat engines at her father's knee? Or maybe in San Francisco, where the engines she would have learned to work on would have been much larger and much more powerful. Would they have raised her as a human or as a Vulcan? Would she have grown up to be an engineer like her father, or a scientist like her mother, or an artist, a musician, a politician?

He could see them there now. Trip seated next to T'Pol on that couch, that sly grin on his face, T'Pol giving him that side-eye that she always had. Elizabeth would have been 30; a lieutenant, maybe a lieutenant commander in Starfleet, if she had followed in her parents' footsteps. On a layover on Earth, taking a break from her job as an engineer, maybe chief engineer of a Federation starship, 'E. Tucker' embroidered on her uniform where her father had once had 'C. Tucker.' Except they had changed the uniforms again; they had stopped wearing their names on their uniforms more than twenty years ago.

Would they have had more kids, maybe a Charles Tucker IV? Would they have gotten married, or stayed married? Marriage was hard enough without adding cultural differences, and the two were often at loggerheads, even when they were in a relationship. Would they have stayed together for thirty years? They seemed to have loved each other to at least try to make it work, but relationships take more than good intentions.

"I still miss him," he admitted.

"As do I," she replied. She sat her mug on the coffee table between them and rose. "Thank you for your hospitality, Mr. President. We will be settled on Vulcan soon. I hope that you will be able to visit. Please bring Amira and Henry as well."

"I should be that way in a few months," he said, also rising to his feet. "Thanks for stopping by. Give my best to Sken and T'La."

She gave a single nod and raised her hand in a Vulcan salute. "Peace and long life."

He mirrored the gesture. "Live long and prosper, T'Pol."


End file.
